


The Ghost of You

by PlotWitch



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-08-19
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/PlotWitch
Summary: It’s a phone call that Edward never thought he would get. You need to come. Anita’s dead. Left in the wake of Anita’s sudden suicide, Edward leaves everything behind to try and find perspective, and some kind of sanity overseas. But the fragile peace he manages to find is shattered suddenly when he runs into her. Literally. Is he losing his mind? Is it just a coincidence? Or is he chasing a ghost across Europe? Either way, he’s in for a lot more than he bargained for when he set out.





	The Ghost of You

“You know it has to be done,” Anita said quietly to Richard, eyes seeking Jean-Claude’s for support. “It’s safer for everyone this way.”

Richard nodded, standing tensely as Anita gave him a fleeting smile and leaned into him, hugging him tightly, and then turning to Jean-Claude and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I love you,” he said, and heard it echoed form Jean-Claude’s lips.

Anita smiled again, but this time there was a shadow to her eyes, and he bit down the urge to beg her not to go. “I know.”

 

Anita sighed as she held the phone away from her ear. A simply call to try and say goodbye to her father had turned in to a two hour lecture on how she needed to find a nice, normal young man and settle down. She sighed again as she bit down the urge to just hang up on Judith, but knowing that Judith wouldn’t be doing this anymore, bit her lip and let her talk.

And nearly cried with joy when there came the beep of call waiting, telling her that she had an incoming call. “Judith,” she said. “I have a call coming in.”

She heard Judith sigh as she cut off her sentence, mid rant. “I had no idea we’d been talking this long.”

Anita snorted as she heard the beep again. “Yeah. Well, I really have to go.”

It took two more beeps for Judith to hang up, and Anita automatically pressed the off button on her phone, and promptly glared at it when it she remembered the beep and turned it on to hear a dial tone. She sighed. There was no one there. Figures.

She dropped the handset back onto its base and pressed the flashing red light on the machine next to it, standing silently and staring stonily as it played through a handful of messages. “This is Bert. I scheduled a raising at one. Garden of Memories cemetery. Don’t be late. I mean that, Anita.”

She pressed the delete button. “Hey Anita, it’s Catherine. I hadn’t talked to you in a while, I was just making the rounds… I wanted to let you know I’m pregnant. Call me when you get this, okay?” Hushed whispers and then it hung up, and she deleted it again.

She glared at the still flashing button and waited. There were two more messages, and each one hurt more than the last to listen to. Ronnie and Louis, engaged. Nathaniel saying for her not to wait up for him, he was spending the night with his girlfriend.

She sighed. Turned the machine back on and turned the ringer on the phone off. She glanced around at her house, trying not to be disappointed that it was as austere and empty as her apartment had been. At least then she’d had her fish. Here… It was more Nathaniel’s than hers, and that was saying a lot.

She picked up a blanket from where it had been tossed on one end of the couch, folded it and laid it back down neatly. Picked up a piece of the newspaper from the coffee table and dropped it in the magazine rack next to the end table. Tried not to think of the future. She shook her head and headed for her room, and the bath, running hot water and sinking into it up to her neck, careless of the curls piled on top of her head and the strands that dangled into the steaming water.

She heard a faint whirring sometime later, long after the heat of the water had begun to fade, and she knew that she had missed the raising if Bert was calling to ask where she was. She pulled the drain out, let the water down and wrapped herself in a towel.

Most people would think to wear something nice, something that would showcase them. Some of the rest would prefer to make it as provocative as possible. Anita chose neither, and wore her most comfortable pajamas, sliding into bed and picking up the second handset from where it sat at her nightstand. She stared at it a moment, then turned it on and dialed a number from memory, frowning and hanging up after the generic message to her to leave a message for Edward to all her back.

She didn’t leave a message. It was enough that he would know she called. And he would know. It was her way of saying goodbye. Letting him know that she hadn’t wanted him to stop her, or even wanted him to try.

She laid the phone back down on its cradle and picked up the Browning where it had sat since before she had called Judith. She didn’t need to, but she dropped the clip anyway to make sure it was full. She checked the chamber, too, catching the bullet already loaded reflexively and sitting it next to the phone. She smiled a little. They’d think it meant something.

It only meant that she hadn’t wanted to reload it. Nothing more than that, and she turned the light off, laying back on her pillows and staring up into the darkness. The gun was a comforting weight in her hand, not quite cold where it rested at her temple.

She smiled one more time. Then she pulled the trigger.

 

Edward woke to the ringing on his cell phone, sighing as he saw a message from his answering service, and picked it up and dialed. He’d crawled into bed not twenty minutes before, head hitting the pillow and his body relaxing into sleep before the clock had ticked from two o’ three to two o’ four. He listened, waiting for a message, but found empty air.

Annoyed, he scrolled through a menu in the automated service, and dialed in the code that would read him the callback number. He frowned when he recognized it. Anita. She had called him, but hadn’t left a message. He shook his head and returned to the main menu, and then set the service to direct dial his cell if another call came from her house.

Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

 

It was early, again, not even five, and Edward smudged the sleep from his eyes as he grabbed for the cell phone on the stand and fought down the urge to throw it across the room. Or maybe through a window. But he flipped it open and blinked as he saw Anita’s number displayed.

For a moment he didn’t answer it as he wondered where she’d gotten his cell number, and then recalled vividly programming the direct dial for her. He pressed the talk button and answered with a gruff, “Forrester.” More to surprise her than anything else. She would be expecting his answering service again, not expecting him to answer himself.

But there was silence, a heavy silence, and then ragged breathing as he tuned out the faint sounds of his own home to listen to the sounds in hers. For a moment, Edward thought maybe she had dialed his service on accident, and pulled the phone away to end the call, but he heard a faint sniffling noise, and brought the phone back to his ear as he sat up, the sheet falling to his waist.

Then, a familiar voice said, “Don’t hang up. Please.”

A familiar voice that wasn’t Anita’s, and his heart beat a little faster as he wondered what trouble she’d gotten into this time. He flipped through mental files until he matched the voice to a face and then a name. “Jason,” he said tersely. “How did you get this number?”

“We… We found it., in Anita’s papers.” There was another pause, and Edward wondered wildly why anyone would be going through Anita’s papers. Why anyone would be calling him and telling him they were going through her papers. Anita would kill them first, and them him for not killing them for her.

And then his mind went completely blank. There _was_ an explanation. But it wasn’t one he wanted to turn to. Because the only way Anita wouldn’t kill anyone for rifling through her personal documents was if she was dead. And the only way Anita would be dead was if someone killed her.

“You need to come,” Jason said, his voice breaking, and Edward’s eyes closing as it did. “Anita’s dead.”

Edward bowed his head, willing the tears not to come, willing the burning in his eyes to stop. Willing for the world to back up, just for a moment, to before those fateful words had been said. _Anita’s dead._

“How?” he choked out, losing the battle as he felt the hot rush on his face and wiped them roughly away.

There was a moment’s pause. “She killed herself.”

It took Edward a full minute to understand what Jason had said, and he felt an icy knot weigh himself down. He blinked once, swallowed and closed the phone without another word. Then he stared at the glowing screen like it had grown glowing red horns and carried a pitchfork.

With a strangled cry he hurled it away from him, not caring as it shattered against the wall and certainly not caring that Jason was furiously pressing redial from Anita’s house, trying desperately to get Edward back on the phone. Instead, Edward was staring into the darkness, trying to forget the last five minutes of his life.

_Anita’s dead. She killed herself._


End file.
